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This year, CHStage was nominated for five Cappie awards in their first time participating. In its first year participating in Cappies, the department won two category awards.

The Cappies Gala for high school theatre students is the equivalent to the Tony awards for Broadway stars. The Cappies are a student-based writing and awards program that allows three to nine students from each participating school to view another school’s show and have a discussion before the show, during intermission, and after the show. The amount of cappies that attend each show ranges from 20 to 90. The school that hosts the cappies also provides them with different portfolios of each technical job since techies aren’t on stage.

Last night CHS won two Cappies for their production of “In The Heights!” Freshmen Mateo Ferro and Ricky Cardenas won awards for best comic actor in a musical and featured actor respectively.

“This is an amazing accomplishment not only for our winners, but for our nominees, or program, or school as a whole,” theater director Michelle Meyer said.

In addition to the two award winners, junior Maddie Bard was nominated for Comic Actress, sophomore Carlos Hernandez was nominated for Lead Actor, and a group of five ASL interpreters also got nominated for creativity. The interpreters translated and performed the entire musical alongside the cast.

CHStage competed against all the school’s in the National Capital Area. “It is an amazing feeling; I’m so excited to be a part of this! I didn’t think that when we began working with CHStage that we would end up going this far,” sophomore Catherine Hiles said about interpreting for the first time.

“I was surprised when we got nominated, but I know even though we didn’t win, this experience was more than I ever expected. I’m so thankful that [ASL teacher Meredith] Maclauchlan gave me the opportunity to sign, and that Meyer let us work with them this year.” Senior, Veronica McDade, another CHStage interpreter.

All of CHStage’s nominations came from this years spring musical, In The Heights, by Lin Manuel Miranda. Miranda also wrote the breakout musical Hamilton, in 2015, which in 2016, made history with it’s 16 Tony nominations, ultimately winning 11.

Bringing home even one Cappie in a first year of participation is outstanding, congratulations CHStage!